This story is a work of fanfiction. As such, it owes a great debt to the creators of the characters used herein: Rumiko Takahashi, Matt Bozon, Erin Bell Bozon and the creative teams of Kity Films and WayForward.

( ｡◕ シーンブレイク ◕｡)

Chapter 12
Electric Dine-and-dasher

Shantae made a couple steps towards the entrance, then stopped.

"Did you remember some important detail?" Xian Pu inquired testing the sharpness of her blades.

"No." The purplette in red shook her head. "There are too many of us, we need a plan. Otherwise we'd spook him. Let's do it like this... You all hide behind the corners, I enter distracting him, you wait for about twenty seconds then rush in all at once to surrender him. Most importantly, don't let him get away! Otherwise we'd have to crawl the entire dungeon."

"Uhh." Akane fidgeted. "It's not nice, barging into his home by deceit..."

"First, we need that seal for saving the world," Shantae reasoned. "Second, you just don't know him like I do." Her voice gained hints of irritation. "Last time he had devoured it all but when I mentioned the seal he just dashed, not even thanking me. So, we catch him! That's the only way."

They hid behind the corners. Shantae walked up to the grate, waited a bit. No reaction. She then began knocking, rattling the bars, even kicking the grate in irritation.

Leaves were rustling, insects were chirping, the friends sitting in ambush were slapping at mosquitoes from time to time.

After about ten minutes, there was finally a voice from the tower: "What a heavenly smell! One moment, I'll open the door!"

The grate clanked, rattled and Shantae disappeared inside. Her and the boss could be barely heard talking, but it was unintelligible except Shantae exclaiming with dry irony: "Well, a boy I am not."

They rushed in, bumping into each other, stumbling over each other.

Inside the tower was dark, cool and damp, one's eyes taking time to adjust. In front of Shantae, there was a familiar two-meter red ball who jumped nervously on his spherical legs when he saw the entire gang.

"Get him!" the dancer shouted excitedly as she replaced the huge dish of pilaf in her ki pocket.

"Brigands! Murder!" the spherical one hollered as he turned sharply around, bouncing on his spherical legs, to begin a panicked acceleration. But Shantae and Xian Pu have already flanked him, each propping him with one shoulder. Bolo was spinning his ball on a chain up intent on lassoing him while Nabiki already did, catching one of his "legs" with a precise flick of her whip.

Squid Baron was plowing ahead pushing the purplettes back, their feet skidding across the moist, slippery stone. Akane threw herself forward, landing prone but managing to grab one more round "leg".

They had him. He had nowhere to go. But it went as well as that Ainu folk saying: "Ichiro, I've caught a bear! — So drag it here! — Can't, it won't let me!"

Xian Pu and Shantae tumbled, swept aside. The little ball unraveled in Akane's hands turning to be an actual rolled up tentacle. Startled, she released it. Bolo was too slow. Nabiki got pulled off her feet and dragged forward with increasing speed.

"Stop, you pest!" Shantae shouted jumping onto her feet.

"Nabiki-neechan!" Akane exclaimed trying to catch up with her sister sliding away prone.

"Aw, bugger!" the said girl swore releasing her whip.

Squid Baron rounded a corner bouncing off a wall like a stampeding rubber ball. A grate clanged loudly as it fell.

Shantae groaned in frustration.

"To think of it," Xian Pu said as she picked the dropped scimitars up, "this `baron` has the girth of a small elephant. Weighing a couple tons for sure."

"Yeah, we had so little time to think it through," Nabiki quiped walking up to her whip and picking it up: thankfully it got unwrapped without tension.

"Well, on the good side, the pilaf is still with us," Shantae summed up sheepishly. "Let's go, I'll show you how to crawl dungeons."

Then she strode down a passage, a different one from where this dungeon's master had disappeared.

The stonework gave way to wild stone of caves, still cool and damp. Water was dripping from the ceiling giving life to leafy plants growing in corners. Here and there yawning chasms were opening, their walls overgrown with shrubbery and lianes lit faintly by daylight filtering from above.

Shantae strode into a corridor with weathered stonework walls, scarce torches burning soundlessly and smokelessly — probably, magic. Turning a couple times she walked into a big flooded hall with floor consisting of a few scaffolds on their side, on the far side and a little in the middle.

The Nerimans took a look around. A couple jade hemispheres adorned with copper spikes was floating above the dark waters. On the central scaffold a dark red crab the size of a bulldog was loitering, its face looking feral with yellow eyes big as saucers and a toothy grin.

"Um, something is wrong here," Akane complained petulantly.

"You say that after spiders with eyeballs?" Nabiki raised a brow. "An advice for you, Little Sis: take things in stride and stop worrying."

"It has teeth, so what." Xian Pu shrugged indifferently. "I'm more interested if these crabs have tricky moves. Like dangerous super-techniques of unavoidable pouncing."

"They only have only super-technique," Shantae said. "Of mucking around in the most inconvenient places imaginable where it is hardest to get them!" She hair-whipped at a hemisphere floating by. It creaked, flipping and thus turning into a flat platform. The half-Genie jumped onto it. "Well, there are pincers too. You get careless, and gotcha." Arriving at the central scaffold, she jumped down landing dangerously close to the crab, dropped to all fours and managed to hair-whip the crustacean in the nick of time, its opened pincers already raised to snap at her.

The monster was catapulted away in a single hit, crashed against the wall and sunk.

"Something like that," Shantae finished. "We need to go to the other side, train using these platforms. It's safe here, further down there'd be bottomless pits or spiky lianes."

Then, without warning, she jumped into the dark water disappearing under the surface.

"Everything is relative," Xian Pu said poking the approaching hemisphere with a scimitar to make it flip: it had turned spiky side up again. Jumping onto the resulting platform, the amazon rode it.

Akane was growing worried when Shantae finally surfaced: "Ahh, so refreshing! This shirt makes you sweat terribly. Whoever invented sleeves was not a nice person... Now you have a go at it, Akane!"

"Uhh." The said girl shivered eyeing the deathtrap yawning below. "All right!" Making a brave face, she kicked the copper rim of the hemisphere as it approached. Then she stumbled landing on it, stiff from fear.

"Teacher," Nabiki said coolly when Shantae climbed onto the scaffold, dripping wet, and whipped at the wall to dry her hair. "Did you forget that Little Sis can't swim?"

"She can't?" The dancer was shocked. "Is that even a thing...? I thought, back on the bridge, she just hit her head and got stunned...?"

"No, Akane is a hammer girl. She sinks instantly, regardless of conditions."

Shantae cast a worried look at her friend who have just jumped onto the second floating platform barely keeping her balance.

After the flooded hall there was the same labyrinth of overgrown caves and ruined corridors, often collapsed. Shantae was leading with surety, never losing her way. A couple times she had whipped at seemingly impassable collapsed piles making illusory stones disappear revealing narrow crawl spaces. Then, they had to climb down into the bowels of the earth via ruined stairwell, with only holes in the walls remaining of stars, jumping from crumbling landing to crumbling landing. The crabs were really hiding in most inconvenient places. One jumped at Akane from an unnoticeable hole in the wall. Only her training with Shantae, having raised her dodging ability, saved her from a pincer pinch. Then Nabiki had to catch her because she side-stepped into the abyss.

"Akane, careful!" Shantae warned her worryingly. "I still have healing potion left, of course, but breaking legs hurts! I know from experience."

The youngest Tendou gulped nervously as she eyed the fall. It was still a long way down to the piles of broken masonry on the bottom. Misstep once, and it may not end with just broken legs.

After the stairwell they saw a locked door in the wall, Shantae commenting they had to go there but needed a key. Xian Pu cast a measuring look at the solid steel grate rooted firmly in the stone but had to admit that yes, they needed one.

After the door there was a cave where they had to jump between meter-wide flowers of giant gerbera, a mess of terribly spiky lianes yawning below. There was a crab loitering on one of the flowers. How did the bugger get there? To Akane, it looked like an insurmountable obstacle — until Shantae whipped at it, reaching from the edge of the nearest flower when the monster wandered carelessly too close.

After that obstacle course, there was a hall with solid walls, both ends equipped with raised grates.

"I have a bad feeling about this room," Nabiki noted with cold suspicion as she stopped on the threshold surveying the walls.

"You have a good eye!" Shantae praised her. "This is a trap with monsters. You enter, the grates fall, monsters appear. You can't leave until you beat them... What are you all standing for? Come on, go in."

The crowd entered. The grates fell with a clang. In the center of the room, a glowing outline faded into existence with metallic hum. Gaining solidity it turned into a knight in solid red armor with a bell-like helmet. A round metallic shield in its left hand, a heavy sword resembling a double-edged cleaver widening towards its end in its right hand.

"These red ones are weak," Shantae explained as she jumped close to the knight, blocking a sword swing with her left bracer while looking back at Akane. "The blue ones are much tougher. Both can make shockwaves. Look!" She slid back.

Grunting like an empty metal barrel, the knight flipped the shield onto its back to grab the sword with both hands. The Nerimans prepared to dodge, Nabiki shifting preemptively sideways from the assumed attack direction.

But the attack was nothing like Tatewaki's flying slash of wind. The knight slammed its sword into the ground with all its might creating a real shockwave rolling in all directions. The middle Tendou barely managed to jump in time.

"Also," Shantae continued undisturbed as she leaped close to the knight again, "attacking them head-on is almost useless, they block all your strikes..." Proving her words, she whipped at the knight a few times, but it turtled behind its metallic shield, only sliding backwards a bit from her hits. "By the way, Scorpion Ladies and Wetmen are like this too."

The knight replaced its shield raising its sword in a two-handed grip. Shantae whipped it a couple times, slid back, jumped over the shockwave, closed again, but the knight was already hiding behind his shield again.

"Hitting them is most efficient when..." The knight tried repeating his attack, was whipped, collapsed with a dull groan and burst into a handful of shiny gems. "When they wind up for their big attack. Just don't linger for too long, you have to dodge the big attack itself. The knights are nothing special but Wetmen and Lady Scorpions do such a bull rush it'd make a real bull envious. They are also huge, jumping over isn't easy... Well-well, what do we have here?" She shuffled the gems with her foot. "Quartz, quartz, quartz, amethyst, citrine... Oh! Is that sapphire...? Naw, another amethyst... All right, let's go... wait, I'll take this one." Shantae touched the biggest crystal with her foot making it disappear. "Could be worth a couple coppers."

The grates had risen, the team trudging towards the exit.

"Bugger," Nabiki swore. "Turns out I can't crawl dungeons alone keeping all the loot for myself."

"Hmm?" Xian Pu heard that and turned to look at her. "I thought even you would overcome such one. They are slow and predictable."

"What if there are two?" Nabiki retorted. "I can run away, dodge and play possum reasonably well, but gladiator pits like that one won't let you run. How did it trigger? If there was a pressure plate I'd have noticed. Meaning it's magic, everything around here is based off of it. But Indiana Jones didn't know magic. And playing possum against monsters who feed on... Hey, Shantae!" she called after the girl leading the group. "Can these crabs devour you?"

"Well, I've never saw it myself, thankfully," the dancer replied, "but skeletons in dungeons are always picked clean."

"An exhaustive answer... In short, I need a warrior partner."

Xian Pu narrowed her eyes. "A curious proposition."

"What...? Oh, of course. No dungeon stands a chance against the combination of my acquired skills of a legendary archaeologist and your combat mastery. But, imagine us dividing the loot."

Xian Pu just harrumphed.

"Exactly," Nabiki said. "No, let's save this combination for especially hard cases. I need an everyday chump."

"Ryouga?" Xian Pu suggested.

"No, he gets carried away far too often. In the literal sense as well. I need someone more controllable. Maybe..." Nabiki looked at Bolo intently.

Shantae, who was crawling through a narrow hole at the moment, looked like she felt something: she stopped, her upturned, suspicious muzzle emerging between her feet.

Nabiki made an innocent face.

"I'm imagining things," the half-Genie mumbled and resumed her crawling.

"In short, I have to keep searching," Nabiki continued in a hushed voice. "I have a suspicion this Bolo isn't much better than Ryouga. On the other hand, he knows the local specifics..."

After the tight crawlspace there was yet another door-frame with a raised grate.

"Keep together tightly here," Shantae warned. "So no one gets pinched."

They entered cautiously surveying a cubic hall with a dais in the center and two levels of galleries along its side walls.

The grate clanged shut behind them.

"Another trap?" Nabiki inquired surveying the solid walls.

"This is a hidden key place," Shantae explained. "Well, it's like leaving a spare under your doormat, in case you lose your key. But instead of a doormat there is a whole labyrinth with tricky secrets, traps and monsters. Any dungeon has such places: no boss would want to lose their lair because of such a little thing as a lost key. Breaking these doors down is arduous, expensive and again, they'd be breaking their own stuff. I only broke into a dungeon once, but I could only do that because Abner and Poe gave me C-4, they were short on time too."

"C... 4...?" Nabiki echoed. "Hmm, fascinating. By the way, that square over there," she pointed at a big square of uniform square tiles on the far wall, "is it a puzzle of sorts?"

"It is!" Shantae nodded. "Probably, a pressing one but I just whip it all over until the trap triggers. All right, keep under the galleries for now, the monster should appear on them!"

She then went whipping at the four-meter square, jumping onto the bottom galleries, from there onto the top ones, to reach the top edge in a jump. The tiles on the edges were flying off, sometimes several at once. When the remaining tiles formed a stylized skull, the hall was filled with metallic hum as scarecrows appeared on the galleries. Whole rows of scarecrows! All at once, they raised their pumpkins.

Shantae shrieked in fright as she dove under the gallery joining her friends, flattening herself against the wall. A fraction of a second later, a wall of flame billowed at arm's end!

"This..." Shantae squeezed out nervously. "There should only be four of them!"

"So, four per each person inside the trap," Nabiki noted coldly as she leaned down to take a good look at the monsters on the opposite gallery. "There are exactly ten of them on that side."

The wall of flame billowed again proving they weren't forgotten.

"How do we get out?" Akane asked nervously. "They have unlimited pumpkins, right?"

"Well, we follow the rhythm," Shantae suggested with no less trepidation, her words accompanied with the next flash. "Then we, uh, begin striking them out one by one in between...? I don't like so much fire, but I came through worse!" She waited for the right moment to make a backward step into the hall, whip her hair grabbing one scarecrow and making it fall down. She then barely made it back. "Here, see— Gah!"

The wall of flame faded revealing one quite lively scarecrow, its pumpkin already raised, point-blank. Xian Pu threw one scimitar piercing the monster together with the pumpkin. It flashed awfully close, almost scorching them, but the scarecrow got dispersed.

"They... They need at least two hair strikes," Shantae was apologizing, guilt in her voice. "Well, I thought—"

"Let's start beating them already," Xian Pu interrupted her. Jumping up during the next in-between, she unraveled another monster and dove back into cover.

"Right!" Bolo agreed as he went throwing his spiky ball blindly, not waiting for the fire to abate. The two quickly got rid of the scarecrows on the lower gallery. The wall of flame was flashing not as dense now, but no less dangerous. Together with Shantae the three of them jumped onto the lower gallery and dealt with the monsters on the upper one.

Walking into the hall, the team eyed the ten scarecrows standing with their pumpkins on the opposite side.

Akane leaned down, tore a loose cobblestone out of the floor, took aim...

Rocks, tiles, other junk were thinning the scarecrows out rapidly. Xian Pu participated as well. Even Nabiki unraveled one with a crack of her whip.

A big, brightly painted chest appeared on the dais in the room center with metallic hum. Shantae whipped it with her hair making the lidr fly open. She then proceeded taking a big key with flair. The grate began clanking up.

They started backtracking towards the locked door. The trap with a knight triggered again. This time they let Nabiki bring the monster down, which she did in three hits.

The middle sister interrupted the youngers' gushing by noting that the knight was almost as mobile as a training dummy.

Behind the locked door there was a short corridor that lead to another, sideways one, so narrow two people would have trouble passing each other. Shantae stopped. Akane leaned out to take a look but her friend jerked her back by the scruff of her neck a second before a basketball-sized fireball zipped from the left to the right.

"Akane, be careful!" Shantae was indignant. "You should be more cautious when peering beyond an unfamiliar corner!"

"I'm sorry!" the girl in question squeaked: three more fireballs zipped by in quick succession.

"What sort of monster is there?" Xian Pu inquired blood-thirstily, her scimitars at ready.

"It's a snake head," Bolo explained. "You find them a lot."

"A stone snake head," Shantae elaborated. "They are only breakable via the elephant stomp, and even that doesn't always work. We now need to go... hmm... Right. Wait for the gap, run to the end, jump onto the wall - but watch out, you climb out right in front of yet another snake head. It's better to jump onto it, wait till it finishes shooting and only then run further. If you feel you can't make it, in this corridor lie down and keep lying flat. But you can't do that in the other corridor, it shoots along the floor there. Other than that, be on your guard: there's a whole labyrinth of such passages. Wait and see if one flies by before going further."

Xian Pu ran first, without waiting for the next pause. She just outran the three fiery projectiles with pure speed. Akane followed suit, nervous, as soon as the path was clear. Shantae wend during the next gap, anxious to leave those two alone. Bolo went after her.

Nabiki narrowed her eyes assessing the path ahead. She ran as soon as the next three fireballs passed. Jumped up grabbing the edge overhead, pulled herself up along a hot wall, tucked her legs in waiting until the next sculpture overhead spits three charges. The fireballs bursting under her feet were washing her with heat, there was a smell of scorched wool, but the middle Tendou waited coolly for the gap from the head above her before pulling herself up with effort. That took the better half of the time she had. She dashed along the narrow corridor. Just as she thought, she was too slow and had to jump over the fireball that caught up with her.

They passed through several more such corridors. There was one place they had to climb across snake heads adorning the opposite sides of a narrow vertical shaft. For Nabiki pulling herself up slowly with effort that was unforgettable experience. The sculptures were hot but not hot enough to burn. Later they had to jump down into a hole, unable to see beforehand where that corridor ended and which way to go.

But then, finally, the fiery labyrinth was over. Another arena room was met with relief.

"There should be four orcs... I think," Shantae warned.

The number of materializing orcs was not four nor twenty but, by some reason, thirteen. It seems they reminded Akane of the morning pervert horde: she took to the monster ranks like a bowling ball to pins, no one had even time to say something. Unlike Shantae's hair whip, lightweight by Neriman standards, Akane's straight punches were downing these monsters in one hit. She wasn't shy of kicking, either. A few seconds later it was over, there was only Akane left standing, catching her breath and straightening her hair, surrounded by scattered jewels. Shantae picked a couple up by touching them with her foot, looking pleased.

After meandering a bit more, they emerged on the bottom of a square well. There were massive iron chains hanging from beams crossing the well from wall to wall. Repeating in a haphazard manner this went up and up, stretching out of sight.

"We're almost there!" Shantae said in joy as she began climbing up a chain, jumping onto adjacent one when she reached the beam.

Xian Pu took a look at the chains, then at the scimitars in her hands. There was absolutely nowhere to store them considering her outfit consisted of ragged short shorts and a terry towel. Weighing the swords in her hands, she turned to face the crowd... She then made a motion of replacing the blades behind her back. For a moment the weapons got obscured completely by her body.

When the Chinese girl brought her hands forward, they were empty.

Smiling victoriously, Xian Pu proceeded to climb after Shantae.

"This..." Akane mumbled. "I thought, only Mousse can..."

"Oh yeeeah?" Nabiki quipped. "What about all the times she got her maces from seemingly nowhere?"

"But I never saw—" Akane fell silent, frowning. "The hidden weapons technique — so its secret isn't the special robes? It only needs that no one sees...? Right?"

"Seems so," Nabiki replied thoughtfully. "All right, we have catching up to do."

The sisters began climbing up the chains, first the younger martial artist in her dogi, then the middle one dressed like a movie archaeologist, complete with a whip and a hat.

"I totally didn't get it." Bolo sighed scratching his head.

It was a long climb. Nabiki's arms were past aching, threatening to fall off. From one chain to another — and further up.

Then Shantae stopped suddenly. "Awww..." she groaned in frustration. "How could I forget...!"

Above their heads, there was ceiling looming in the darkness. The well wasn't ending there but narrowing about four times, continuing as a slit about half human height in width. This shaft was running flush with one of the walls, impossible to reach from the chain. Both the walls and the ceiling here were smooth, devoid of handholds.

"How do we go further?" Akane voiced her worry.

"You have to continue as a monkey," Shantae explained, frustrated. "Just leap up there and climb up the wall. But we all—"

"So what's the problem?" Nabiki interrupted her from down below. "We have two people with chains or whips, Bolo can use that ball of his to grab walls... You can, am I right? The well has quite convenient width up there, Even I could climb it pushing at walls."

"My grappling ball-and-chain won't hold two," warned the only guy of the team.

"You would not need to," Nabiki elaborated. "You climb there yourself, anchor yourself against the walls then simply hang your chain down—"

"Instead of crawling across each other..." Xian Pu interrupted her as she climbed to the very top, crawling over Shantae in the process. "Let's move on already."

Taking aim she jumped at the wall, pushed off of it back and up, reached the shaft edge with her palm, then slapped her other palm against the wall, to hang with her hands pushing against the opposite walls.

"How did you..." Shantae was watching with fascination the amazon curling up and folding flexibly to bring her legs above her head to turn upside down.

"There's a special training regime," the other girl replied stretching the kinks out of her arms, obviously anchored with her legs. "It's called Cat Push. Your muscles become more dense without increasing in size... Nabiki, get your whip here."

The middle Tendou unwrapped her whip, took aim and threw it looping up where the Chinese girl grabbed it and quickly lifted her up into the shaft.

"Give it to me, I'll lift the rest," Xian Pu demanded.

"Without dropping Akane in the process," Nabiki retorted with sarcasm. "Purely by accident."

The amazon snorted but did not argue, she simply started climbing up. Then she paused: "Shantae, are there traps up there?"

"Hmm, no!" the half-Genie replied merrily. "Just smooth walls to the very top."

"Big Sis, can you really hold us?" Akane was doubtful. "It's a double weight..."

"Riiight, your physics grades are sad as always," Nabiki replied. "There is no difference between hanging on the rope and holding a rope with you on the other end. The load is the same. The double weight will act on my legs, but the width of this slit is so convenient..."

First Shantae, then Akane climbed up the whip she let hang. They kept climbing pushing at the walls, with Shantae gushing incessantly about this amazing new method. Nabiki rolled her whip up and followed suit, groaning.

"Are you really all right, Big Sis?" Akane asked her worriedly.

"My leg muscles... huff... will remember this... huff... and avenge themselves."

The shaft opened into a corridor well-lit with magical torches. It was clean, clearly tidied up, but still moist and cool. Water was dripping from the ceiling noisily. Shantae led to the right confidently, between rows of five-meter stone statues of girls holding the ceiling. Soon the five adventurers were standing in front of a grate framed by an angular, stylized brass maw of a snake. Shantae approached, the brass lids of the ornament flung oped and the grate began rising.

"Here's the boss battle," the half-Genie noted off-hand. "Put them away! Put them away now!" she snapped at Xian Pu who had readied her scimitars. "This... concerned parent will unleash his young on us. Do you want dealing with him totally enraged?"

The amazon snorted but replaced the blades behind her back, making them disappear.

"So... This is something like a dojo challenge?" Akane asked, stretching.

"More like, smack the dolt to make him listen," Shantae corrected. "We didn't have to fight at all, he just had to give us the seal, and that's all! He is always making things so complex." She turned to enter.

"Wait," Xian Pu stopped her. "First, tell us about his main techniques. We botched that with Risky Boots, let's plan this battle proper at least."

"Well..." Shantae got lost in thought for a moment. "His main technique is trampling rush. He dashes back and fourth bouncing off walls, very hard to jump over. Then... Warps himself up, just under the ceiling, dropping from up there. But that is much easier to dodge not to say he aims totally blindly."

"Warps?" Nabiki asked. "What sort of technique is that?"

"Well... The instant transfer somewhere, you know," Shantae explained, puzzled. "By the way, I learned all my warp dances from the Warp Squids. And Squid Baron is a common Warp Squid... Well, he may not be common, he is always so concerned about something. But he is still a Warp squid."

"Wait, wait," Nabiki tried interrupting her verbal deluge. "You mean, you can teleport too when you dance?"

"Yep. But I haven't practiced those dances for too long. I could probably pull Zombie Caravan off, maybe Water Town..."

"Trampling, transferring himself up to just below the ceiling," Xian Pu interrupted them. "Is that all?"

"He also warps his young in," Shantae added. "They rain from the ceiling and begin running around knocking you down. Be gentle with them, all right...?" Meeting Xian Pu's expectant stare, she added: "Now that is really everything."

Beyond the doorway there was a modest-sized square hall. It had no back wall, opening into a dark, overgrown gorge. Instead of a ceiling there were densely intervined tree branches overhead.

"So you have passed my labyrinth!" Squid Baron dropped from somewhere above, landing in the center of the hall. "A futile effort! You won't get the magic seal! Young ones, to arms! Let's show these brigands that messing with us is a bad idea!"

"Listen! We don't—" Shantae tried resolving the conflict by talking, but the two-meter red ball with purple spots was already speeding up intent of ramming them.

The half-Genie slid to the side smoothly. Akane jumped up with all her might slamming her heel into the opponent as he flashed under her. Xian Pu jumped aside with careless grace. Nabiki dodged via desperate tumble. Bolo attacked head-on like a true hero, slamming his multi-functional ball-and-chain between his opponent's eyes.

He was then slammed into a wall to slide down it like a limp rag.

"Bolooo!" Shantae drawled with expression of endless tiredness. "You can't do that against bosses. You just can't!"

Squid baron, meanwhile, had stopped in the center of the hall, frowning and clearly contemplating something.

His smaller look-alikes began raining from the ceiling. About the size of a bed-side table, they were colored brightly, from red to green to cyan. With mischevious expession on their faces, this colorful crowd began chaotic dashing around.

Shantae was jumping over them or whipping them away. Akane and Xian Pu were kicking them away easily. Nabiki dodged once, twice, then she was knocked down and trampled.

"Big Sis!" Akane shouted, rushing towards her, leaving stunned and upturned squid cubs in her wake.

"I'm fine," the other girl replied venomously, covering herself with her elbow from another stampeding ball on smaller ball feet. "These legs of theirs are like rubber balls, you'd better— Watch out!"

Squid Baron was speeding up, coming at them. Nabiki rolled up to a wall, pressing herself into the corner between it and the floor. Akane began a tumble, she wasn't fast enough and got knocked away but still managed landing on her feet.

Slamming the wall like a rubber battering ram, Squid Baron sped away. Shantae and Xian Pu stepped away from each other sharply, letting him pass between them to hit him, one with her hair, the other with her foot.

"But if this one hits, they'd need a scoop to gather me up," Nabiki commented in a cold and detached voice. "How many tonnes does he weigh?"

Rebounding from a wall for the second time, Squid baron was speeding through the hall again. Now it was clear to everyone he was not running but sliding, similar to Shantae's backsliding dodge technique. The little squids were fleeing merrily, jumping down the gorge and disappearing in the bushes.

"Are our strikes even affecting him?" Xian Pu inquired when their opponent stopped near the wall where Nabiki took cover, having shrugged off hits from both the purple-haired girls as well as Akane's right punch. "He hits the walls harder himself."

Squid Baron disappeared, fell down from somewhere above into the center of the hall. He then began frowning and contemplating again.

"They do, but..." Shantae fidgeted, indecisive. "All right, I feel better already. A couple simple ones won't harm me!"

Flicking her hand out, she produced two small clouds, which she then whipped with her hair sending them towards the opponent. The clouds were frowning, darkening to dangerous bluish black, then began spraying lightning bolts around haphazardly with flash and thunder.

Most of the lightning bolts discharged into the stone floor, but those few that hit Squid Baron, were enough. Jumping up, he fell to his side, stiff as wood and smoking a bit.

"Oooh, what a relief," Shantae commented. "By some reason, I'm feeling better now, when my mana isn't full," she explained to intrigued Akane. "Despite using up only a tiny bit of it."

Xian Pu approached the downed opponent to poke him with her foot. No reaction.

"Is he even alive?" Nabiki asked standing up and dusting herself. "What about Bolo?"

"They'd be fine," Shantae waved her concerns aside as she walked up to one of the walls and knocking a hidden panel out with her hair. The revealed hiding place contained a hybrid of a big dish and a six-petal flower, a thing of green porcelain with a golden trim and a thick purple oval in the middle, surrounded by a glowing white aura. Shantae quickly plucked it off the wall and hid in her ki pocket.

Bolo was nursed with healing potion and berated sternly. The comatose Squid Baron was reassured he need not fear Risky, Shantae got it well in hand. It wasn't clear if he even could hear that.

Then they headed towards the exit. Turned out this hall wasn't that far from the entrance tower.

"I'll return here this week," the half-Genie was telling her plans, hugely pleased with the outcome. "We ran by several places where magic jam is hidden, you have to be a monkey. I could also visit the dance spirit's fountain, it's deeper down in the dungeon. I know that dance already, but I can leave a coin, in gratitude for that time."

( ｡◕ シーンブレイク ◕｡)

Author's Notes:

1. Beating Squid Baron using only lightning in Risky's Revenge earns you a Steam achievement after which this chapter was named. Oh, and he has critical vulnerability to electricity.

Published in Russian: May 05, 2019. Translated to English: August 23, 2019.